


Once in a Lifetime

by psiten



Series: SASO 2015 Fills [12]
Category: Homestuck, 弱虫ペダル | Yowamushi Pedal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Silicon Valley Start-Up, Computer Programming, Crack, Getting Together, M/M, Multi, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 05:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4654497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psiten/pseuds/psiten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p> "Is it really okay for your spine to hold two liters of liquid on your hat?"</p>
  <p>"Nobody ever got great code without a little danger and a lot of coffee. Where are the peanuts?"</p>
</blockquote><p>Crosspost from the 2015 Sports Anime Shipping Olympics, Bonus Round 2. Original prompt from <a href="http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/4403.html?thread=1208371#cmt1208371">ts_smeliot</a> requested Naruko/Imaizumi/Onoda in a Silicon Valley AU where Imaizumi and Naruko have a long-standing rivalry in competitive programming, and the OT3 launch a start-up.</p><p>Title taken from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU">Talking Heads song</a> of the same name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once in a Lifetime

     Working on-site wasn't Naruko's favorite way to code, but it had its perks. Their little start-up's president or recruiter or whatever he was had promised to keep the place stocked with bulk food and soda and hammocks until this thing got off the ground. If that was happening, he could just quit paying rent, forward his mail to this office, and live at his computer -- hence carrying in his box of Nerf weapons and other necessities. He could always get a gym membership if there weren't showers in this place. And hey! It looked like there were! Bonus.

     "Nice digs, President."

     The bespectacled cutie setting out concept pamphlets at the two workstations (so he must've hired a second coder, but Naruko wasn't worried about having someone to do the grunt work) jumped like he hadn't heard Naruko come in. "Oh, no, no, no, Naruko-kun! I can't think of myself as your boss that way! I really want this to be a partnership, where you're free to express your creativity! I think I'm more like a _brand manager_ than anything else. I'll be taking care of the capital investments and the social-- Oh, but I'm sure you're not worried about that..." Motormouth McSmiles stuck out his hand. "Please, call me Onoda. Onoda is fine!"

     "All right, Onoda. Just let me get situated, and I'll start making you a game!"

     "Thank you, Naruko-kun!"

     "So what platform are we building for first?" he called out, setting his box down by the hammock he planned to claim as his. All he'd need until his support coder showed up (and needed to be put in his or her place) was his machine, which was never far from his backpack, and his coding hat. "I like getting the interface sorted out first so we can play test as we go."

     "Platform?" Onoda's eyes were like empty glass bubbles when he turned around. "I didn't know you'd need a platform! About what size, and where? I can probably get materials from the hardware store..." Naruko tried not to laugh too hard. Whatever, he could work with that. He'd just code for iPhone. Everybody wanted to be in the Apple Store. Meanwhile, Onoda was squinting at his hat. "May I ask what you're wearing on your head?"

     Pulling off the red helmet, Naruko headed to the drink bar to fill one side with Mountain Dew. "This? It's perfectly designed to stream snacks and drinks, hands-free, while I'm working, so I don't get shit on my shit!" Once the soda side was full of magic yellow elixir, he ran the carafe of hot coffee into the other side. "It's got thermal control to keep hot and cold drinks at ideal pressure and temperature for up to four hours at a time, _and_ I have the liquid spout calibrated to deliver the optimum ratio of Mountain Dew to coffee for perfect flavor, perfect sweetness, perfect temperature mix, and perfect caffeine content! Hot and sweet without being too hot and sweet, you know what I mean?"

     "That... seems dangerous. And heavy. Is it really okay for your spine to hold two liters of liquid on your hat?"

     "Nobody ever got great code without a little danger and a lot of coffee. Where are the peanuts?" he asked, opening the snack hatch on the back of the helmet.

     Their 'brand manager' (seriously, way cuter than his pictures) fussed with his hands, trying to avoid eye contact and not at all avoiding blushing. "I opted not to bring any in the building until we could be sure that no one working here was going to have a peanut allergy. I haven't gotten the health forms back from... well, anyone... so..."

     Health forms? Oh, right. That must have been what was in the envelope. Naruko had figured everything he needed to know was in the email, so he hadn't even bothered opening the hardcopy.

     "No worries! There's beef jerky! Thanks, by the way." Bite-sized nuggets of sweet (well, salty) teriyaki jerked beef went into the hatch, then he set it on his head and tested the jaw-operated lever to make sure the hat dumped his snacks on his tongue without a problem. Sweet action. "So, who's got the other desk anyways?"

     "Well, I put a lot of effort into finding two top programmers who could work on equal footing, so I'm sure you've at least heard of--"

     The door opened. A slick dick trying to look corporate with a blazer over his Megaman t-shirt (no doubt carefully chosen to minmax relative obscurity for nerd cred versus recognizability with mundanes so he could mix both ways) laid eyes on him the second he was in the room. "You...!" the bastard growled.

     "Imaizumi! What, you upset I stole another choice job from under your nose? Well, get used to it! This ain't no middle school robotics olympics, and I'm not working with piece-of-shit axles that put drag on the wheels anymore!"

     "Umm, Naruko-kun, Imaizumi-kun..."

     "Steal _your_ job? I'm the one who works here! And I'd like to hear your excuse for taking _third_ in the last Hack-a-Thon. Still claiming it's because your hat was broken?"

     "My hat is a valuable time-saving resource!"

     "If you can't hack at your best with nothing but a box on the table and your naked ass in the driver's seat, _you can't hack at all_ , Red Bean."

     "This coming from you, Hot Shot?! Do you even remember the Bad Santa worm, and who saved your fucking ass?!"

     "I had a 104 degree fever!"

     "Excuses!"

     "Everybody stop!" Onoda screeched. He'd thrown himself bodily between them before they could get close enough to throttle each other, and who would've guessed their self-appointed networking guru could make a face that serious? "I hired you both because you're the best, but if I can't rely on you to work together, I do in fact have a list of other candidates. Aoyagi and Teshima can start tomorrow. But, as I'm sure you know, since even I was able to work it out, they work as a team. If you can't work together, I'm very, very sorry, because I was looking forward to working with both of you, but--"

     "It's him or nothing?" Naruko murmured.

     Imaizumi's glare glinted. "I'm willing to work with whomever I have to. Even you."

     "Yeah, well, I guess it's just a rhythm game. I can code those in my sleep. We'll have this working good enough to get bought out in no time, and then I won't have to look at your face again. Deal?"

     "Deal."

     They shook on it like civilized people, but Onoda still didn't look happy. He just looked confused. "What do you mean, bought out? I thought I was supposed to get investors to buy _in_... Am I doing it wrong? And after all that research I did, too!" He looked so innocent. Naruko couldn't bring himself to explain, and it looked like Imaizumi was stuck in the same place.

     The two of them shared a glance, and with a nod Imaizumi did the corporate misdirection bullshit he did so well, and Naruko just took a nice, long gulp of Mountain Dew-laced coffee to keep from cracking up. "You know what, Onoda? Let's just take a look at your concept work and start divvying up coding tasks. Then you can look for investors, and that'll all sort itself out."

     "Okay!!"

     "The concept packets are on paper," Naruko whispered while Onoda wheeled a markerboard out of the corner.

     "Paper? Seriously?"

     "Yeah. How do you think he even found us?"

     "Well, we know he can use email, and he did manage to register a domain. Maybe he just... likes paper?"

     "I guess. Oh! That reminds me!" Pointing at the snack table Naruko added, "Onoda won't stock peanuts until you turn in your health form."

     "Health form? What health form? I never got a--"

     "Snail mail."

     "That's what that was?!"

     "Yup."

     "Wow."

     "He's freaking cute, though."

     "Don't fuck the boss. It's unprofessional."

     "Says you."

~//~

     Drinking coffee the old fashioned way -- black, from a sixteen ounce ceramic mug -- Imaizumi tried to ignore Naruko walking in circles around his hammock (he hadn't asked, but as near as he could tell, the tiny oaf was actually living here), ridiculous hat strapped to his head, 3D display visor over his eyes, hand-mounted keypads wrapped around his palms while his fingers twitched out lines of code. Ostentatious bullshit is what all that was, and Imaizumi couldn't believe he had to work in the same office as someone using it. A perfectly serviceable standing desk, ergonomic trackball-keypad, and blue-blocker specs to reduce eyestrain were all anyone really needed. Code was in the wetware, not in the hardware. Besides, being able to step away from the workbench without unhooking oneself from wires and tubes made it easier to reset, get distance.

      _Not_ invoke the law of diminishing returns by writing increasingly sloppy code for thirty-six hours straight. This was about excellence, not who finished first. Although he usually finished first anyway because he took enough catnaps to see straight on a regular basis.

     And where the hell had this pressure variable been defined anyway?!

     "Bean, you've got plimpargset.BLAMMO.var all over the sustain subroutine, and I can't find what it's supposed to be or where the fuck it came from."

     "Check the New/Continue."

     "Why are you defining core variables in New/Continue?!"

     "Umm, I needed it on the sustain, and you were in the opener but not in New/Continue. Duh."

     "Yeah, well, your documentation is shit. You could have saved me five minutes by adding that to the variable list with a note." He brought the live list up to the top of his right screen so he'd have it at the ready when his find on New/Continue turned up the definition. And people wondered why he hated working anywhere near this elephant's anus or his ratty-ass code. Who cared if he could make some functions work in twelve lines that a mundane programmer would need a hundred to pull off? None of it was elegant, none of it was adaptable, and none of it was ever documented.

     The redhead made a noise like a sick goat. "Variable lists are for wusses."

     "And collaborators!"

     "Come on, Hot Shot! You've got to learn to _feel_ the--"

     "Whatever. You're an ass. I'm moving it to the opener and _documenting it in the variable list_ so when you inevitably forget what it was supposed to do, _you're welcome_."

     "You're welcome to s--"

     That lovely sentiment got cut short by Onoda bursting through the door in a ray of sunshine. "I did it! I got an investor for $4.5 million to cover you guys! And, and, and advertising, and booth fees at the expo, and..." Apparently out of words, he threw his hands over his head and glowed. "We have actual money!"

     Twitching his 'save file' key combo (at least he did that much), Naruko dropped his visor from his eyes. "That's awesome! So, we can actually hire an artist? 'Cause once we get to fine-tuning, we're gonna need the actual art..."

     Onoda's glasses wiped over with blank shine. "You mean, you guys don't just..." Miming typing in the air in front of him, he asked, "You know?"

     "No," Imaizumi answered. "We don't code art."

     "Well, my code _is_ art..." Naruko sassed. The desire to stuff gym socks in his mouth was strong. Very, very strong.

     "But we don't code _drawings_. Somebody's got to make the graphics. The expo application is due in three weeks, and we won't do too well with nothing but plain blue circles."

     "... Oh."

     Naruko dropped an arm around Onoda's shoulder, mussing his hair with the other hand (now free of their keypad attachments). "But hey! You got money, that's great! Artists work for money. How'd you convince our lucky, lucky angel to fork it over anyway?"

     "It was nothing, really!" The same old sheepish smiles came back, their boss's honest giddiness that he was working in something as 'cool' as the gaming industry coming back full force, and Imaizumi had to tell himself he was staring because it was good policy to pay attention to the boss, and not because he was distracted by the way the air seemed to sparkle around Onoda when he laughed. "The VC practically convinced himself! He said he was overjoyed to support a game that would increase literacy among children!"

     And there was that chill in the air again.

     "Increase literacy?" Imaizumi asked.

     Naruko followed with, "Isn't this just a rhythm game?"

     "Well, it was, yes... I mean, that was the plan, but like I said, the VC... practically convinced himself. And I just, I guess... didn't have the heart to tell him that wasn't what we were doing? Kind of?" He was blushing while he said it, too. Most bosses didn't have the decency to be embarrassed when they changed specs that completely. "But how hard would it be, really, to just... put some words in there?"

     Imaizumi took off his blue blockers and dropped his face into his hand. "Just put some words in? _Just put some words in?!_ "

     "Is it more than that?"

     Naruko must've caught the utter lack of ability to even start with that sentence, and luckily for all of them was fast enough to cover. "Hot Shot over there's worried about how we're going to score the words, you know? Because it's a game. We know how we're scoring for hitting things in the right rhythm, but you've got to know what the words are for if you're gonna score the words."

     Which wasn't really the entirety of why Imaizumi had a headache right now, but it'd do.

     "So, you can't just..." Now, miming punching things on his phone, "Tap the words in a rhythm? Instead of dots?"

     "What, like a rap battle?" Imaizumi groaned.

     He could hear the sparkles come back into Onoda's voice. "Exactly! Like a rap battle. I know I've heard of those somewhere! Now, where was it...? Rap battle, rap battle..."

     The little whimper of, "Oh god..." was probably Naruko. At least, Imaizumi hoped he hadn't made a sound that was quite that whiny and nasal. But he was thinking the same thing, so he guessed it could just as easily be him.

     A fucking rap battle game?

     "So, what, are we supposed to score this on rhymes?" he asked. "Coherence? How are we even developing the word banks, the challenges... Hell, how are we even going to make different rhymes work when we're dealing with fucking homonyms?!"

     Onoda offered, "We could use the International Phonetic Alphabet!" sticking his finger in the air with a bright, bright, way too bright smile. It was about to blind him. Where were his eyedrops?

     "No!" Imaizumi and Naruko yelled together.

     Naruko added, "No one uses the International Phonetic Alphabet." Because Onoda still looked confused about why.

     "Really? But it's so useful... That was always my favorite part of the dictionary... Oh! Now I remember where I heard about rap battles! Those were in Homestuck, weren't they?!"

     "You read Homestuck?" Naruko asked.

     "Yes! And the Homestuck author does art! This is perfect! Maybe I can license this as a tie-in, and get him to provide sprites and level art for the game itself! We can really do this!" The boss spread his arms in front of him like a marquee. "Homestuck: Rap Battle! What a brilliant idea! The four original protagonists can be the basic options for player identities, and later we can make trolls and other characters available as downloadable content... Why didn't we think of this before?"

     "We're not getting bought out, are we?" Imaizumi whispered to himself.

     Well, he thought he'd whisper, but Naruko was shaking his head at him from across the room, so he must have been louder than he'd realized.

     "Now I just have to go pitch the idea to the Homestuck author... see if he'll authorize a tie-in..."

     Face planted firmly in both hands, and now balanced on his desk, Imaizumi supplied, "Hussie?" and was as shocked as anyone when Onoda gasped in reply. He turned his eyes on the room, but Naruko was just as confused as he was. "What? What did I say?"

     "Imaizumi-kun. I will have you know that I am simply doing my professional responsibility to the full extent of my... umm... ability. I am _shocked_ that you would denigrate the act of approaching an artist for the right to use his art in such a manner!" This was getting more and more confusing by the second, and at this point Imaizumi wasn't even sure they were having the same conversation. "It's not as if I'm asking him to sell out! And furthermore, I will not tolerate any slut-shaming insults in this company. That's just rude."

     Oops.

     "I wasn't calling you a hussy. The guy who writes Homestuck. His name is Andrew Hussie."

     "Oh! Well, that makes more sense. I'm sorry I doubted you."

     "Fabulous," Naruko said, pushing Onoda towards the door. With a smack on the butt, Imaizumi noticed, rolling his eyes. Not that Onoda seemed to realize it'd happened. He was pretty sure they weren't sleeping together, but Naruko clearly hadn't given up. "You go track down Hussie and have a talk, while Hot Shot and I do the logistics on this rap thing."

     Their boss posed in the door with his fist in the air. "Wish me luck!"

     "Good luck!" every half-way reasonable person in the room chanted together.

     He and Naruko sat in silence, staring at each other for ten ticks of the second hand on the clock, making sure Onoda hadn't forgotten his keys or something. Then they started in on the screaming.

     "How the fuck are we supposed to do this?! Our application is due in two weeks!"

     "Three weeks, Bean."

     "Great, an extra _week_."

     "And how the fuck am I supposed to know how we're supposed to do this? At least there's time before the actual expo. All we need by three weeks is something to get the point across, it doesn't have to be finished."

     "Oh, now who's playing fast and loose with spec, Mr. Documentation?"

     "Don't give me that shit. We have three weeks to make a functional engine for a cellphone game to judge _how sick your rhymes are_ , and we don't even have a word bank yet! Or any clue if we're actually going to get the tie-in so we can tool the content... I don't know how we're going to get a protocol in there that can judge if a rap is coherent, let alone good! There isn't a grammar checker on earth we can crib that does that! And let's not forget we need to figure out how we're adapting our current interface to deal with multiple syllables..." He stared for a few seconds at Naruko banging his head against the wall next to his Frankensteined Roomba with a Nerf ballista on top (although it did collect its own spent ammunition, which was nice). "Hey, Red Bean."

     "Yeah, Hot Shot? You got a magic wand to make this all better? Fuck, I need more coffee..."

     "No, I was just thinking. There's another hammock."

     "Yeah, so?"

     "So. I think I'm moving in until this is done. If that's okay with you."

     His fellow coder narrowed his eyes. "What'll you do if I need a break, and ask Onoda to fuck, and he says yes?"

     Imaizumi narrowed his eyes right back. "Well then, maybe we'll both fuck Onoda, because if you're gonna do it, you're gonna do it with me in the room, one way or the other. Besides, if we take breaks at the same time, we'll get back on track faster, and he _does_ have a cute butt."

     Naruko's grin looked so fresh, you'd think he hadn't just been coding on a caffeine high for the last twenty hours, and hadn't just been asked to develop a cellphone game capable of judging levels of burn within metered text. "You think his butt's cute."

     "Eat real food every once in awhile. Your brain and your mouth have stopped communicating."

     "No worries! You can have his butt. I just want his face!"

     For fuck's sake. "That is the most immature and obscene thing I have ever heard you say, and I've known you since middle school. Now if you want to work on an algorithm for mapping pronunciation from English-language spellings, I'll start building an engine to supply word banks."

     Cracking his knuckles, Naruko hoisted himself into his hammock and surrounded his entire being with his coding cocoon. "We... are gods."

     "And we are not getting paid enough."

     "Yeah! We're working for fucking peanuts! Pfft!"

     Both of them must've been way too burned out, because from the way they were both doubled over laughing, you'd think that'd been the funniest joke ever. Even though it really, really was nothing near a joke.

~//~

     The sight of their little expo booth brought tears to Onoda's eyes. The children playtesting their game, the music licensed from Homestuck and rendered in nostalgic 8-bit sound, the colors, the lights! Everything was exactly how he'd always dreamed! Or, not exactly, since technically his original dream had looked a lot more like Pac-Man, but this was _beautiful_.

     "Everything is going so well... Imaizumi-kun and Naruko-kun should be here to celebrate! Imaizumi-kun! Naruko-kun!"

     Where had they gotten off to?

     "Karkat-kun, Sollux-kun..." he called out to the cosplayers who were handling crowd interactions for this shift. "Did you see where Imaizumi-kun and Naruko-kun went?"

     "ii thiink they went off two take a pii22? kiinda 2u2piciou2 that they had two go together, though."

     "WHY? ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT? DID I HAVE ANY SAY IN WHETHER OR NOT TWO GROWN MEN NEED EACH OTHER'S HELP TO TAKE A PISS?! NO!!!"

     "O-okay, umm..." Backing away slowly, he tried to remember where the nearest bathroom was. "I'll just leave the booth in your hands for now. I'll be back in a minute!"

     They didn't seem to be in the bathroom either, but he was pretty sure that was Imaizumi-kun's blazer wedging open the storage room so it didn't lock. He tiptoed in after them, heading towards the sounds of a struggle. Hopefully they hadn't decided to start fighting again! Everything had been so peaceful while they'd been designing the game, and it'd be a shame to break up such a talented team before they got around to making the downloadable content!

     "Get... the fuck up... on the shelf, Bean!"

     "Yeah, I'd like to see how you get my pants off if I'm-- hrmmph!"

     Once he got around the corner to where he heard metal clanging into the wall, he turned on his handy keychain flashlight (never leave home without it!) to find Imaizumi-kun wearing Naruko-kun's hat, and Naruko-kun's hand most of the way down Imaizumi-kun's pants, and they'd definitely been kissing. Onoda knew what a hickey looked like.

     "Oh! I'd realized you'd moved into the office as well, Imaizumi-kun, but I didn't know you two were so close! I'll just give you some privacy, then! A ha! A ha, a ha ha ha!"

     As he backed away, Naruko-kun screamed, "Wait!" Onoda was pretty sure he could hear his own sweatdrops in the silent, echoing room while he did, in fact, wait. "There's... uh... room for one more? You know?"

     "No," Imaizumi-kun shot back.

     Naruko-kun cut him off, "Yes."

     "In the midd--"

     "Yes!"

     They made eloquent faces at each other for a few seconds. Onoda looked back and forth between them, not entirely sure if he was being invited to a threesome in the storage room of a gaming expo or not. Finally, Imaizumi-kun took a deep breath and said, "Yes."

     "Yes," Naruko-kun echoed. "Definitely yes."

     "Oh. I..." He thought about his game booth, and how much he really did want to see the crowds' reactions to their wonderful game, because it was so wonderful... but on the other hand, he'd been sensing for weeks that the two of them might be waiting until the game was finished to possibly, potentially ask him out on a date, and he'd been so confused about which one of them he'd rather be with, because he really liked them both, and this really simplified that decision so much... but the game demo...! Onoda frowned at his partially undressed programmers. "Would that invitation still be open after the expo? Because I left the booth with the two trolls, and I'm not entirely sure I--"

     "Yes," both programmers said at once.

     "Okay!" Onoda said, waving and backing away again. "Have fun! I'll... see you when you get back? And stuff?"

     He carefully snuck back out the door, replacing the blazer in the opening. It wouldn't be any good for them to get stuck there, after all. Getting to meet the programmers was a huge draw at expo booths, he was sure of it! And somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard Naruko-kun saying, "Fucking score, Hot Shot. I told you!" while Imaizumi-kun said, "Bean. Shut the fuck up and drop your pants."

     Who would have imagined the wild world of game design was so bold! And now he was part of it!

     He couldn't wait to write all about it in his next letter to his mother!


End file.
